Josiah is standing in the middle of the street with his hand up and two fingers poised against his thumb, exactly where they’d be just after a snap.
“I was starting to like that one,” he says.
Kade climbs back out through the broken window, picking glass off her sleeves and shaking wood splinters out of her hair, swearing under her breath the whole way. She stops when she sees us. Mara is wringing black slime off her hands, her face screwed up, her tail lashing slow and hard behind her, and I’m standing there dripping with it, glaring at Josiah with everything I’ve got.
Kade looks from the wreckage of the creature to the two of us wearing it.
“What did I miss?”
Yeah. Bringing Josiah along was a very, very bad idea.
35
Mara
The goo coats me from my hair to the ends of my claws, gray and thick, reeking of rot. My lion rakes at the inside of my skin, desperate to be out of it, so I give her what she wants. I set my feet and shake hard, the motion rolling down from my shoulders, out through the end of my tail. The goo comes off me in ropes.
“Damn.” Aaron gets his arm up too late. The goo slaps across his chest, his cheek. He drags the back of his hand down his face, only working it in deeper. “I was already wearing most of it, baby. Thanks for that.”
“Sorry.” I don’t mean it, and the laugh I’m swallowing gives me away. My lion’s smug about it. I’m not clean, but I’m better than I was.
Josiah’s head cocks, his red eyes bright on me. He’s got gore down a sleeve and doesn’t pay it any mind. “A lioness who shakes the filth right off herself.” His grin comes slow. “I didn’t know you could do that. Marvelous.” My lion preens at the attention, and I make her settle.
Kade isn’t watching any of it. She’s turned to face the way we came, her weight already shifted to bolt. “We need to move. Before more of them come looking for what’s left of this one.”
Aaron grimaces down at himself, then at me, gray muck dripping off us. “It’d be good to clean up first. Before we do anything else.”
“There’s bound to be clothes at Eric’s.” Kade waves us after her, already moving. “Vainest man I’ve ever met. His closets’ll be stuffed to the doors.” She rolls her shoulders, something close to a grin tugging at her mouth. “Been a long time since I had to get anywhere on my own feet. Try to keep up.” She breaks into a run.
Josiah looks down at the gore pooled across the road and pushes his lower lip out. “What a pity. I was only just getting comfortable.”
“Jo. Come on.” Aaron’s already pulling me after Kade. “Let’s go.”
We run deeper in. I’ve never set foot in the Witching Glen before today, and already I want out of it. I stay tight against Aaron, letting my nose lead where my eyes can’t. What it finds first is rot, thick and close. Under it, something older—cold, mineral, a smell that crawls into the back of my throat to stay. My lion is awake under my skin, hackles up, prowling for the threat she can feel but can’t find.
We come up on a set of iron gates, tall and black, worked into shapes I can’t make out in the flat gray light. Kade slows. Past them, a path runs up to a house so big it blots out everything behind it.
The house was built to make people feel small. It still does, even in ruin. Spires claw up off the roofline. The porch runs wide across the front, the windows climbing above it row on row, all of them gone dark. The grand face of it has grayed over, the surface streaked and peeling, like something beautiful that got walked out on and left to fall in on itself.
The quiet here presses on me, worse than anything I’ve felt yet. Nothing moves. And under it, I can feel eyes on us—too many to place, watching from somewhere I can’t find. My lion’s hackles go up. She paces hard inside me, hunting the watchers she can feel but can’t see, ready to put her claws in the first one that shows itself.
Aaron’s hand finds mine and closes around it. “Stay with me.” He pulls me through as Kade sets both hands to the gates and shoves them wide, the hinges shrieking into the still air. Her eyes never stop moving.
Josiah comes through behind us, in no hurry, his head turning slow. “I can feel them.” He’s not playing now. “So many lost souls.”
Aaron’s looking up at the dead house, and there’s something sick working in his face. “After that thing in the street, I keep waiting for the next one to come out of a doorway.”
“It will, if we’re slow.” Kade steps over a chunk of broken pavement without looking down. “I told you what’s left of these people. You balance the power you’re born with, or it eats you down to the monster underneath. Every one of them chose to be eaten.”
Josiah strolls up the path ahead of us, taking the ruin in like it’s something to savor. “What a lovely home.”
“The memories in it aren’t.” Aaron’s voice goes flat. Josiah doesn’t slow, just keeps walking and smiling at the rot.
I drag a hand down my arm. The goo’s drying to a film on my skin, tacky and foul. My lion hates it as much as I do, prowling restless under my skin until it’s gone. Aaron catches the movement and his face softens. “I’ll get us cleaned up. I promise.” That he noticed, with all of this pressing in around us, pulls a smile out of me. When he reaches for my hand again, I lace my fingers through his and let him hold on. We go up to the house together.
Aaron leads us up to the doors, watching Kade’s back. She gets there first and eases one open, careful, reading the dark on the other side. Whatever she finds, she decides it’s safe enough, and slips inside. Josiah goes after her. Aaron pulls me in last.
Inside, it’s all scale and shadow—a ceiling I can’t find, a hall running off into the dark, a staircase sweeping up into more of it. Eric built himself a palace. My lion paces inside me, sure something’s wrong with a place this grand standing this empty.
